This is a great and fun test. The wife and I have had our differences in what we see when it comes to color. She "thought" what she was seeing was correct, and in her mind I was always wrong. I skunked her in this test.

So you’re good at taking tests. So am I. Got a perfect score on the computer version, just like I did with color pegs way back when computer screens were all monochrome.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, a friend and I were riding water taxis around Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, and we had a map showing all the taxi routes in different colors. But to me, two of the colors seemed like nearly identical shades of magenta, while my friend thought I should have my eyes check because to her the difference in color was glaringly obvious.

So I wouldn’t divorce your wife over her “inferior” color perception. You never know when you might need her to correctly read a map for you.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dattier

I've never heard of Radiolab before, but I've heard enough now never to watch it, whatever it is, nor to trust anything from Kevin Loria.

Well, watching radio is generally boring, and also dangerous while driving, but I actually tuned in to the middle of this show while driving one day, and once I started listening, I couldn’t change the station or turn it off. It was really quite fascinating stuff.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dattier

Anyhow, as a person who has seen off-white and bronze in all images of that dress (except the video of it on ABC News two nights ago,

And yet you question the idea of people being unable to perceive blue…

I’ll give you this though:

Quote:

Originally Posted by dad1153

No one could see the color blue until modern times
By Kevin Loria, BusinessInsider.com - Feb. 27, 2015
. . .
A researcher named Jules Davidoff traveled to Namibia to investigate this, where he conducted an experiment with the Himba tribe, who speak a language that has no word for blue or distinction between blue and green.

When shown a circle with 11 green squares and one blue, they couldn't pick out which one was different from the others — or those who could see a difference took much longer and made more mistakes than would make sense to us, who can clearly spot the blue square.

But the Himba have more words for types of green than we do in English.

When looking at a circle of green squares with only one slightly different shade, they could immediately spot the different one.

So doesn’t this suggest then that they could readily distinguish blue from that slightly different shade of green? (And presumably the many other shades of green they have words for as well?) And if it’s only one particular shade of green that looks to them like what we call blue, doesn’t that suggest that this is more a matter of where one draws perceptual boundaries in labeling than an inability to see a basic color, per se?

Quote:

Originally Posted by VisionOn

The entire argument can be brought to a decisive end by opening the image in question in an image editor or by using a simple tool like Color Picker which will measure the values of every pixel you are see on your screen.

If your computer is telling you in hard numbers what color you are looking at and you see something differently then you are simply wrong. If it looks different to the original on another computer then the person who uploaded that image was wrong.

Nope, sorry, you are simply wrong.

Human vision is not designed to measure light frequencies or intensities, but rather to provide a more or less constant representation of the world.

Photographic and video reproductions, meanwhile, take advantage of our trichromatic perceptual system to create color simulations that we perceive as matching “real” or “natural” colors, but in fact, do nothing of the sort. Indeed, if our eyes processed the visible light spectrum the way our ears do the audio spectrum, none of us would see anything on a TV or computer screen but a cacophonous mess of red, green, and blue light, not necessarily matching the “color” of anything natural at all.

The dress issue is not about the color calibration of people’s screens. People look at the same image on the same screen and see different colors, depending on whether or not their brains compensate for the lighting depicted in the photograph and/or the washed out and generally poor quality of the image. Those who compensate “correctly” see the dress more like it “really” “is”; those who don’t may well be seeing something closer to those “hard numbers” you talk about.

Quote:

Originally Posted by thefrain

I may not be understanding the initial debate. Is this what the dress looks like in person or what it looks like given a photographed image?

The real world question was the about color of the dress, not qualities of the picture. Honestly, only here in AVS could we turn this into a debate over pixel values and such.

Logo will offer a sneak peak of the first episodes of the new interconnected dramas “Cucumber” and “Banana” following the season premiere of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” on March 2, the network announced Friday.

Created by Russell T. Davies, the multi BAFTA award-winning writer of “Doctor Who” and “Queer as Folk,” the two interwoven drama series will explore 21st century gay life through the lens of two different generations.

The hour-long “Cucumber” will explore the lives of Henry Best (Vincent Franklin) and his boyfriend, Lance Sullivan (Cyril Nri). The half-hour “Banana” will follow the individual lives of younger characters orbiting around Manchester, England.

The seventh season of the hit series RuPaul’s Drag Race will bow on Monday, March 2 at 9 p.m. ET/PT, with “Cucumber” and “Banana” debuting immediately afterwards.

The two new shows will return for their official season premieres on Monday, April 13 at 10pm ET/PT. [CLICK LINK BELOW TO SEE CLIP]

Come April, Netflix is introducing a big, bad bald dude that even House of Cards' Frank Underwood wouldn't want to mess with.

Vincent D'Onofrio stars as Wilson Fisk, a New York-born gangster whose methods of cleaning up his city differ greatly from the blind title vigilante of Marvel's Daredevil, in a 13-episode season due April 10.

This Fisk isn't quite the Kingpin of crime from Marvel Comics lore, in looks or demeanor. Yet executive producer Steven DeKnight says Daredevil is as much an origin story of a complex antagonist as it is a portrait of do-gooder lawyer Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) and his masked secret identity.

The underworld won't even speak Fisk's name because of the power he holds, though at first glance he comes off as insecure, especially when he meets the comely art dealer Vanessa Marianna (Ayelet Zurer).

But when folks cross or disrespect him, the results often are very bloody.

"I just brought in this kind of character who in one sentence could easily go from being a child to a monster, depending on where his emotions take him," says D'Onofrio (Law & Order: Criminal Intent).

The late Michael Clarke Duncan played the Kingpin in the 2003 Ben Affleck Daredevil movie, and for his own take on Fisk, D'Onofrio studied the comic books to nail the "whole feeling and mood" of the supervillain.

DeKnight knew he couldn't be as super-sized as the comics' Fisk, a 6-foot-7, 450-pound dude who resembles a sumo wrestler in a fashionable suit.

The actor shaved his head and added about 30 pounds to his 250-pound, 6-foot-3 frame.

"I wanted him to have an appearance of being super-powerful so that when he throws a punch, it's a major punch," D'Onofrio says. "There's a lot of weight behind it."

A fan of D'Onofrio's since 1987's Full Metal Jacket, DeKnight also wanted the actor to look outside the comics for character nuance. In the aftermath of one violent scene in which Fisk gets "pretty rough" with another guy, D'Onofrio says, he sees his reflection as being paler than he actually is — a subtle nod to something the actor discovered about serial killers when doing research for a past role.

"He had a passion and an understanding of what we were trying to do, of making it a very grounded, gritty, realistic show," DeKnight says.

"Here is an actor who's really thinking about it on not only a character depth but a visual depth that I really loved."

Childbirth is a beautiful, magical thing, if you’re related to the child. Otherwise, it’s messy, tense and noisy. In either case, if something goes wrong, it’s very sad.

Lifetime’s new series “Born in the Wild” shows real people who have chosen to give birth in circumstances that will increase the chance that something will go wrong. Like most reality TV series set in the wilderness, it devotes most of its airtime to showing and telling us that it’s very likely things will go wrong.

Then we get 10 or 15 minutes of the messy, tense and noisy stuff, after which everything turns out fine. That’s a relief, as is the fact that the show is over.

In the premiere episode, airing this Tuesday, March 3, at 10 p.m., a young couple named Peter and Audrey decide to give birth to their third child in a tent outside their home in a remote part of Alaska that’s two hours from the nearest hospital.

Audrey, who is a midwife, believes that it’s safer to give birth at home than in a hospital, but lest we get too calm, the narrator tells us that the American Medical Association disagrees.

The show’s attempts to build suspense will work on people who haven’t seen the many similar shows that pull the same tricks. For example, when the family’s dogs start barking wildly, Peter heads out into the woods with a gun, saying they’re probably barking at a bear.

“There’s gonna be a lot of blood in the air,” he tells the camera. “A bear can smell it from a very long distance.” Even though no bear is seen, visions of claws ripping through the tent fabric dance in our heads.

When Peter goes to pick up Audrey’s mother and sister at the airport, which is located across a big lake from their house, bad weather forces them to walk part of the way back, raising the possibility that she’ll go into labor while alone with two young children. (And a camera crew, but never mind that.)

When the waters in the lake rise, the intended birthing tent is flooded. A hastily set-up replacement is soon swarmed by mosquitoes.

Average idiots would conclude that nature is trying to tell them to at least move the birth into the house, but Peter and Audrey aren’t average idiots. They decide to continue the process in the tent.

Despite her midwife training, Audrey is a screamer. Although her labor pains take up only a few minutes on air, those few minutes last an eternity.

Each commercial break is preceded by an ominous sound bite. For example, Peter tells the camera, “There’s always that fear in the back of my mind: The baby’s dead.”

It may be a spoiler to say that the baby is born healthy, but since the people behind “Born in the Wild” are at least complicit in the couples’ decision to put their child at risk, one assumes that the camera crew is accompanied by a backup medical team and some means of evacuation. So the risk is probably very small.

In a second episode that was provided for review, the suspense is mercifully dialed down. Amy and Jeff, an Arizona couple with eight children under the age of 18, decide to drive three hours from their home to give birth to their ninth in a piney wilderness area.

They think it’s a good idea to bring the first eight with them. The kids do provide some comic relief. One boy speculates wildly as to how the baby is going to get out.

Several commercial breaks are preceded by teases in which Jeff’s voice, off-camera, says, “Amy!” in a tone that suggests she is unresponsive. This turns out to be apropos of nothing.

The worst commercial-break tease happens when a pole slips while Amy is inside the tent. We’re led to believe that she will emerge seriously injured. In fact, she’s not even scratched.

An ominous-sounding wild beast prowling outside turns out to be an elk. But the main source of tension is whether their midwife will arrive in time.

Since Amy, who has been through seven home births, is less of a screamer than Audrey, the labor is easier for us to watch. We could have done without the partially blurred shot of her water breaking.

“Born in the Wild” never explains why we should worry about people taking unnecessary risks for fuzzy reasons. That leaves unexplained why we should watch.

Whatever undercurrent of nostalgia has driven fans of kids shows from the 1990s and early 2000s to NickReboot.com, Viacom is having none of it.

On Friday, the parent company of Nickelodeon filed a lawsuit against the anonymous operators of the site for allegedly violating copyrights "willfully, maliciously and with wanton disregard" and for violating trademarks "by creating the false and misleading impression that Defendants’ pirated Viacom Works are produced, distributed, endorsed, sponsored, approved, or licensed."

NickReboot offers free 24/7 streaming plus a premium on-demand service with a tab of $35.99 for a year.

According to NickReboot's Twitter feed, the site has played shows like SpongeBob SquarePants, Jimmy Neutron, The Adventures of Pete & Pete and Rugrats in the past 24 hours.

Viacom doesn't know who's behind NickReboot — otherwise it wouldn't be going to court against "John Does" — but it's not going to stand idly by on an unlicensed service, especially as it's about to launch its own over-the-top channel.

The operators of NickReboot have done a square pants with Viacom lawyers these past couple years.

In mid-2013, the site was written up by outlets such as Entertainment Weekly and Huffington Post before it was shut down. At the time, it was reported that the website's owner explained on Facebook that “this amount of publicity will almost certainly force Viacom to come to a legal decision about us. … I am absolutely horrified of what that might mean for myself, my loved ones, and for anyone else who was involved.”

The Facebook page has been removed and NickReboot is now up, along with an "About Us" section that hints at the company's Sisyphean legal defense ahead.

"Nick reboot exists solely to provide a medium for commentary, criticism, educational review, and research of Nickelodeon as it was during that time period," states the site. "nick reboot operates strictly under certain provisions listed in the doctrine of 'fair use' as codified in section 107 of the copyright law, and monitors the status of related industry legislation such as Bill S.978 (pending) for compliance."

The latter refers to a proposal to make unauthorized streaming a felony.

In its lawsuit, Viacom not only wants damages. It is also demanding that ISPs, cloud storage providers, advertising service providers and anyone else offering material support to NickReboot be added to an injunction. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Viacom by David Caplan at Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton.

Unlike a vast number of characters that have appeared in “The Following,” the show itself just wouldn’t die. On the plus side, this grim Kevin Bacon vehicle returns for season three feeling less gruesome and promiscuous about its body count, although the basic conceit — a stunning number of people who don’t just admire serial killers but blindly follow them — remains intact. Ratings for the show have been so-so, and Fox has launched some promising rookie dramas since its renewal, which, barring an unforeseen surge of interest here, should be reason enough to put Kevin Williamson’s creation out of its misery.

Despite the storytelling cartwheels undertaken to keep it going, “The Following” wasn’t built to last. So the twists became increasingly ridiculous in service to prolonging the perils of Bacon’s FBI agent Ryan Hardy, who could teach Michael Corleone a thing or two about being pulled back into a career he wants to shed.

Some time has passed since the previous season, offering Ryan not just greater tranquility when the story begins, but time to develop a new romance with a beautiful doctor (Zuleikha Robinson), which, given Hardy’s history with women, might qualify her as the bravest person in TV history.

Still, that serenity can’t last — Ryan’s suggestion of catching up with a colleague “when things calm down around here” elicits an unintentional giggle — and there’s soon a new outbreak of not-so-random murders, linked to those still alive and at large after the bloody conclusion of season two.

It gives away little to say the full depth of what’s happening has yet to reveal itself after two episodes, beyond reuniting Ryan, sidekick Mike Weston (Shawn Ashmore) and Hardy’s niece Max (Jessica Stroup, whose addition last year had the feeling of a network note) hoping to figure out what’s coming, and identifying the tentacles of the conspiracy in order to thwart them. The show also contains what plays like a split-personality homage to “Psycho,” which would be creepier if it weren’t so derivative.

The cast is actually quite good, including some interesting additions in the early going. But there’s a nagging sense that “The Following” would have worked best had Hardy played his cat-and-mouse game with Hannibal Lecter-like mastermind Joe Carroll (James Purefoy) for a single season and been done with it, as opposed to milking the concept — and pushing the violence to mind-numbing levels in season two — this far beyond its natural expiration date.

As noted, Fox’s cupboard was looking pretty bare before “Empire” and “Gotham” launched, which no doubt helps explain the decision to give “The Following” another shot as a sort-of utility player, paired with the latter. But that was then, and this is now.

“The killing is only beginning,” Ryan says dourly, surveying a crime scene in the premiere.

No doubt, but the best thing now would be to provide fans some closure, while bringing “The Following” — and the killing — to an end.

The land of Ooo is now coming to a theater near you. According to Deadline, the hit Cartoon Network show "Adventure Time" is being developed by Warner Bros. as an animated feature. Show creator Pendleton Ward is reportedly involved in the project, while Roy Lee and Chris McKay from "The Lego Movie" are set to produce.

There have been rumblings about an "Adventure Time" feature film for a while, with the show's executive producer Adam Muto even saying he'd like to see a live-action movie, but now the project has finally been confirmed. Though the new movie will be animated, those interested in seeing a live-action version of the show can always check out Gritty Reboots' fan-made movie trailer.

Warner Bros. did not immediately respond to a request for comment from HuffPost Entertainment.

THE VOICE
NBC, 8:00 p.m. ET
The new seasons of American Idol and of this show both have started off with an impressive array of talent. On this show, though, the most fun of all is to be had right now, as the blind auditions continue – and when the judges, after spinning around in their chairs to show support for the formerly unseen singers, have to compete with one another to persuade those singers to join their team. This year, Pharrell is cleaning up, Adam Levine is striking out, Blake Shelton is loving Levine’s rising frustration level – and Christina Aguilera already has prompted one tender TV moment, when she urged Pharrell to join one unclaimed young contestant in a duet of one of his songs, “Happy,” after she remarked, post-rejection, that she sang his song in her high-school a cappella group.

GOTHAM
Fox, 8:00 p.m. ET
For the second time in this series, young Bruce Wayne found himself kneeling over the bleeding body of a loved one. Last time, in the premiere, it was his parents. This time, last week, it was his beloved guardian Alfred, who had been stabbed in the chest by a loved one of his own. Alfred survives, of course – anyone who’s ever read a Batman comic or seen a movie or TV show based on one knows that – but tonight, what’s even more interesting is the fate of another tough survivor: Jada Pinkett Smith’s not-dead-yet Fish Mooney.

EL REY NETWORK PRESENTS: THE DIRECTOR’S CHAIR
El Rey, 8:00 p.m. ET
Film director Robert Rodriguez, this network’s founder and chairman, uses his own expertise, and his ability to approve and schedule any TV show he wants, to sit down occasionally for this series of specials, interviewing fellow directors whose work he admires. As a program executive, it’s a good move. As an interviewer, it’s another one. These shows are like TV equivalents of Hitchcock/Truffaut, that landmark book in which critic and filmmaker Francois Truffaut interviewed Alfred Hitchcock about his body of work. And in this newest edition, Rodriguez interviews Francis Coppola, who starts out talking about his childhood, his earliest movie memories and influences, and goes on from there. Highly recommended.

THE CONVERSATION
El Rey, 9:00 p.m. ET
Following a new Director’s Chair special in which Robert Rodriguez interviews Francis Coppola, the El Rey network presents a prime-time showing of one of Coppola’s bold early films. Made in 1974, it stars Gene Hackman as an audio surveillance expert, and the co-stars include Harrison Ford, Cindy Williams, and John Cazale (pictured), one of the only actors who can be said to have starred only in very good movies: this one, the first and second Godfather films, Dog Day Afternoon, and The Deer Hunter. Then he died of cancer, at age 42.

BETTER CALL SAUL
AMC, 10:00 p.m. ET
Lots of things about Better Call Saul make me smile. Last week, one of them was the music: the soundtrack made room for such odd yet perfect musical choices as two songs that I first adored as a teenager: Herbie Mann’s recording of “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and Dave Brubeck’s “Unsquare Dance.” Oh, and the scriptwriting and the acting? They’re as great as the music.

TV Review'CSI: Cyber'Patricia Arquette's acting fine, but TV is full of geeks
By David Hinckley, New York Daily News - Mar. 2, 2014

Patricia Arquette has been on a roll lately with "Boardwalk Empire" and then her Oscar, and she shows no sign of slowing down in "CSI: Cyber."

The show itself, however, isn't quite as fresh as the implicit premise would lead us to believe.

Arquette plays Avery Ryan, a driven cyber-psychologist who is sent around the country by the FBI to solve its toughest "cyber crimes."

She has to understand the complex technology of both the machines and the minds behind them.

She's good at what she does and she protects her team, which often face serious danger. She's also not warm or fuzzy, and we soon learn she considers this game personal as well as professional.

Arquette brings a deceptively deep intensity to the role, and wondering where she will take it provides a strong incentive to keep watching.

What's less riveting is the whole concept of solving crimes that are perpetrated in cyberspace, or plotted on the exotic "darknet."

It sounds like it takes the premise of the whole "CSI" franchise, which is solving crimes through methodical forensics, and sails it into exotic uncharted waters.

Problem is, a fistful of shows do that already. There's hardly a crime show anywhere on television, from "The Blacklist" to "Scorpion" to "Scandal," that doesn't have an in-house computer geek who can hack into everything from Swiss bank accounts to an illicit human auction.

CBS is clearly hoping "Cyber" will reinvigorate the whole "CSI" franchise, one of its most successful ever, and toward that end is launching "Cyber" with an international promotional gala.

At the end of the day, though, what we've got is essentially more "CSI" — with a first-rate lead.

The comedy debuted with back-to-back episodes. Not only did it post much better numbers than the other two new shows that bowed last night, ABC’s “Secrets & Lies” and CBS’s “Battle Creek,” but it also finished as the night’s No. 1 show in adults 18-49, a tenth ahead of ABC’s “Once Upon a Time.”

“Earth” drew a 2.3 18-49 rating for each episode, according to Nielsen overnights, growing on lead-in “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” which posted a 1.8 at 8:30 p.m., by 28 percent.

The show, which got very good reviews, became Fox’s highest-rated comedy debut since “Brooklyn” in September 2013.

“Secrets” had a smaller debut. It drew a 1.5 for a two-hour episode from 9 to 11 p.m., not a huge number but better than ABC has been doing in those slots.

It remained steady from start to finish, always a good sign because it means viewers liked what they saw.

“Creek,” meanwhile, posted a mere 1.0 in 18-49s, though it did better among 25-54s, the target demo for CBS’s Sunday lineup, with a 1.6.

Fox finished first for the night among 18-49s with a 1.8 average overnight rating and a 5 share. ABC was second at 1.6/5, CBS third at 1.2/4, NBC and Univision tied for fourth at 1.0/3, and Telemundo was sixth at 0.3/1.

As a reminder, all ratings are based on live-plus-same-day DVR playback, which includes shows replayed before 3 a.m. the night before. Seven-day DVR data won’t be available for several weeks. Forty-nine percent of Nielsen households have DVRs.

At 7 p.m. CBS was first with a 1.6 for “60 Minutes,” followed by ABC with a 1.3 a “Time” recap episode. Fox was third with a 1.2 for reruns of “The Simpsons” and “Bob’s Burgers.” NBC and Univision tied for fourth at 0.9, NBC for a repeat of “The Voice” and Univision for “Aqui y Ahora,” and Telemundo was sixth with a 0.3 for “Top Chef Estrellas.”

ABC took the lead at 8 p.m. with a 2.2 for “Time,” up 29 percent from its most recent episode in December, while Fox moved to second with a 1.8 for “The Simpsons” (1.8) and “Brooklyn” (1.8). NBC was third with a 1.4 for more “Voice,” CBS fourth with a 1.3 for “Madam Secretary,” Univision fifth with a 1.1 for “Nuestra Belleza Latina,” and Telemundo sixth with a 0.3 for the end of “Top Chef” and start of the movie “Total Recall.”

At 9 p.m. Fox moved up to first with a 2.3 for “Earth,” with ABC second with a 1.5 for “Secrets.” Univision was third with a 1.2 for more “Latina,” CBS fourth with a 1.1 for “The Good Wife,” NBC fifth with a 0.8 for “Dateline” and Telemundo sixth with a 0.4 for its movie.

ABC regained the lead at 10 p.m. with a 1.5 for more “Secrets,” while CBS and Univision tied for second at 1.0, CBS for “Creek” and Univision for “Sal y Pimienta.” NBC was fourth with a 0.9 for more “Dateline” and Telemundo fifth with a 0.4 for the end of its movie.

Among households, CBS led the night with a 6.4 average overnight rating and a 10 share. ABC was second at 3.5/6, NBC third at 2.8/5, Fox fourth at 2.3/4, Univision fifth at 1.5/2, and Telemundo sixth at 0.4/1.

Nielsen Notes (Broadcast)NBC wins the February sweep againAverages a 3.1 in 18-49s with a big assist from the Super Bowl

NBC won the February sweep for the second straight year, and for the second straight year it got a huge boost from sports.

The Super Bowl sparked the network to a big advantage over second-place ABC, though it was down from last year, when it carried the Winter Olympics.

NBC averaged a 3.1 adults 18-49 Nielsen rating during the four-week period used to set local advertising rates, which ended Feb. 25. That was off 23 percent from last year’s 4.0.

ABC was second with a 2.0 rating, up 67 percent from last year, when it averaged a 1.2.

CBS placed third with a 1.8, growing 29 percent from last year, when it averaged a 1.4. ABC and CBS ran a lot of repeats last year against the Winter Games.

And Fox was fourth among the Big Four with a 1.5, down 59 percent from last year, when it carried the Super Bowl and averaged a 3.7.

NBC’s margin of victory was entirely due to the Super Bowl. Removing sports from the networks’ averages, ABC would have been first, followed by CBS and then NBC.

The Super Bowl was, of course, the month’s top program with a 39.1. That lifted NBC to first despite the fact that its top non-sports show, “The Voice,” was off the air until the last three days of the sweep period.

The network did not have a great month beyond the Super Bowl.

Thursdays remain a real problem, as the addition of second-year hit “The Blacklist” to the night has seen mixed results.

Its ratings are down, but the drama is doing better than anything else that has aired on the night in the past two years. The new dramas airing with it are struggling badly.

ABC had a decent month with strong results from its Thursday and Friday lineups as well as “The Bachelor,” which is up year to year.

But new limited series “Marvel’s Agent Carter” posted unimpressive ratings and its Sunday lineup is uneven. It, too, got a huge boost from a special event, last weekend’s Oscars, the month’s No. 2 program with an 11.0 rating.

CBS chugged along with decent ratings for most of its shows, including the series premiere of “The Odd Couple” and the series finale of “Two and a Half Men.”

As for Fox, its lineup has a lot of problems. But the mega-hit new drama “Empire” is blunting a lot of those issues. It scored the month’s best rating for a regularly scheduled non-sports program, hitting a series high of 5.4 on the final night of sweeps.

After captivating Norway, the Slow TV concept is making its way to the UK. While it’s not exactly the 8.5 hours of knitting or 134-hour coastal cruise that NRK2 has promulgated to great local success, BBC Four says its slow-down airing this spring is inspired by the idea. It will include a selection of programs designed to give audiences “the chance to sit back, unwind and watch some very unhurried television.”

BBC Four Goes Slow will include three deliberately unrushed programs celebrating craftsmanship, travel and art — each devoid of voiceover or added sound effects.

Norwegian public broadcaster NRK2 inspired viewing parties in 2013 with the Slow TV phenomenon to which LMNO Productions acquired U.S. rights at the time. The NRK take was a hybrid of unhurried documentary coupled with hours and hours of continuous coverage provided by fixed cameras trained on a subject or an event. Its National Knitting Evening, for one, included 240 minutes of discussion on the popular pastime followed by seven spinners and knitters hunkering down to stitch a large men’s sweater in an attempt to break a Guinness world record. Slow TV started in 2009 when NRK was working on documentaries to celebrate the 100th birthday of the national train line and resulted in Bergensbanen, a 7.5-hour continuous program that showed every minute of a train journey from Bergen to Oslo. Ratings showed viewers weren’t only tuning in for two minutes, but were actually engrossed. Slow TV has not yet hit the States — could it?

The planned BBC Four programs include The Canal; which most closely resembles NRK2’s Bergensbanen. It will screen as an uninterrupted two-hour boat trip down a historic British waterway and will be filmed in real time. Billed as a “rich and absorbing antidote to the frenetic pace of modern life,” it will allow the audience to “take in the images and sounds of the British countryside, spotting wildlife and glimpsing life on the tow path, as if they were there.” Guidebook facts about the canal and its history will be delivered by embedded captions. Emma Tutty is exec producing for ITV’s The Garden Productions, and Clare Paterson for the BBC.

The other programs are Make, three half-hour films that take a quiet look at the making of a series of simple objects, such as a classic steel knife and a wooden chair; and documentary expert Frederick Wiseman’s National Gallery, a three-hour portrait of the museum’s working life.

It's the same old story: Two disaffected young New Yorkers get drunk, have sex and the next morning it's a lot of awkward small talk, dancing around the real issue and never wanting to appear too willing to lay one's real feelings on the table.

At first it appears that's all that "Billy & Billie," the new series debuting Tuesday on DirectTV's Audience Network, has in mind. Adam Brody is the guy, Billy, and Lisa Joyce is the girl, Billie, and at first blush all their "what did we just do and how can we avoid actually dealing with" talk seems a bit tiresome. But then you learn two things: One, this series is from writer-director Neil LaBute, so even when the terrain is familiar, it's still littered with rough patches; and two, Billy and Billie are step-siblings.

Though the show is being promoted based on this incestuous premise, the issue isn't ever said aloud until the very end of the first episode. A curious decision to hold back on the goods in an increasingly cluttered scripted cable landscape.

But no matter, the dialogue, as written by LaBute, is as sharp as anything he has done previously onstage or the big screen. And the characters are just as nasty to each other as ever.

Billy is a magazine writer for the lifestyle magazine Chisel and Billie is an illustrator and when the series begins, they've just reconnected at their parents' marriage renewal ceremony. Really reconnected. They may not have spoken much in a few years, but they made up for lost time in a big hurry.

While Billy is reserved and emotionally remote, his step-sister is a big raw nerve of bluster and insecurity. Of the two, Billie's tale is the more dramatic and therefore the more fun to watch.

This is LaBute's third series for DirecTV's Audience Network, following "Full Circle" and "Ten X Ten," and his second with Brody, but the real breakout star here is Joyce, whose intense nonchalance is a perfect way to mask the swirling feelings inside.

Despite the sitcom-like premise, "Billy & Billie" largely avoids the kind of wacky shenanigans or shock gags seen in something like a Farrelly brothers production. They produced the film "Say It Isn’t So," which trod similar ground back in 2001.

Instead, what LaBute is doing is akin to a stage play, a series of largely static scenes taking place in bedrooms and diners across Manhattan, with each scene set off with a typewritten slug line, even further reinforcing the "written" aspect of the series.

And though the laughs may come through gritted teeth and a pained wince, they are there. It's an enjoyable series, at least for the three episodes available for review. Just don't expect these two to have a happy ending.

Now its reach is encompassing multiple media, once again on a huge scale.

Tonight the first Marvel TV show, “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” returns at 9 p.m. on ABC following a two-month layoff, when it was replaced by, yes, another Marvel show, “Marvel’s Agent Carter.”

Those aren’t the only Marvel TV shows, though. Next month, on April 10, Netflix introduces the first of four planned Marvel series, “Daredevil.”

Later this year “AKA Jessica Jones” will launch on Netflix, and the service will eventually premiere “Iron Fist” and “Luke Cage,” in addition to a miniseries in which all the characters will appear.

This doesn’t even cover the Marvel movies, which are still very strong at the box office. “Guardians of the Galaxy” was last year’s No. 1 grossing film in the U.S., and the “Avengers” sequel “Age of Ultron,” coming out in May, is expected to be this year’s top movie.

Still, there’s so much excitement over “Avengers” that it could always give “S.H.I.E.L.D.” and “Daredevil” a boost. And since Disney owns Marvel Entertainment as well as ABC, even another season of “Carter” could happen.

Judge Judy Sheindlin has extended her whopping contract with CBS TV Distribution to host the top-rated “Judge Judy” through the 2019-20 season.

Deal adds three more seasons to her existing pact, which would have expired at the end of the 2016-17 cycle.

The extension is undoubtedly lucrative for Sheindlin, who has been making more than $47 million a year under her previous contract. This time around, the deal also includes a first-look production component for her Queen Bee Prods. banner, which launched another successful courtshow strip this season, “Hot Bench.”

“I’m thrilled to be working with my CBS family for five more years, and very excited about this new adventure in production,” Sheindlin said. “I loved the experience of creating and developing ‘Hot Bench’ and look forward to replicating its success with more new, compelling and smart TV.”

Even with her mammoth salary, “Judge Judy” is a cash cow for CBS. Now in its 19th season, the gaveler reigns as the undisputed No. 1 firstrun syndicated series by a wide margin with an average of 10.3 million viewers each week.

“We could not be more excited to continue our longtime relationship with Judy,” said CBS Global Distribution Group president Armando Nunez. “She is a true television icon who entertains and inspires millions of fans each day. We look forward to continuing to provide our station partners with her highly successful show and to working with her to create the next generation of hits.”

Sheindlin ranks as one of the highest-paid personalities in TV, and with her legal background she has the wherewithal to orchestrate her own contracts. She’s not known to have an agent or manager.

Critic's NotesThe ‘Loser Edit’ That Awaits Us All
By Colson Whitehead, The New York Times Magazine's 'First Words' Column - Mar. 3, 2015

If you have ever watched a reality TV show and said, “He’s going home tonight,” you know what the “loser edit” is. I imagine it started as a matter of practicality. If you have 20 contestants, they can’t all receive equal airtime. When an obscure character gets the heave-ho, the producers have to cobble together a coherent story line. Intersperse the snippets across the hour, and we can identify sins and recognizable human frailty that need to be punished. Anyone tuning in for the first time catches up quickly. The loser edit is not just the narrative arc of a contestant about to be chopped, or voted off the island, whatever the catchphrase. It is the plausible argument of failure.

The concept first bubbled up out of the pop-cultural ether when competitive reality shows hit upon their formula, in the form of “Survivor” and “The Amazing Race.” TV enthusiasts — part fan, part Roland Barthes with a TiVo — congregated on online message boards like Television Without Pity, creating a new slang with which to dis and deconstruct their favorites.

Fifteen years later, the critical language used to carve up the phonies, saints and sad-sack wannabes of reality shows has migrated, and the loser edit has become a limber metaphor for exploring our own real-world failures. Fate doles out ideas for subplots — fire her, dump him, all species of mortification — and we eagerly run with them, cutting loser narratives for friends and enemies, the people we have demoted to the status of mere character. Everybody’s setbacks or degradations have been foreshadowed if we look hard enough at the old tape. We arrange the sequences, borrowing from cultural narratives of disgrace, sifting through the available footage with a bit of hindsight — and in turn, we endure our own loser edits when we stumble.

With so many media bloggers staggering under daily content quotas, rooting through the digital-content vaults, we can now assemble the montage of public shame more quickly than ever. A few weeks ago, NBC told Brian Williams to pack his knives and go. Cue the supercut of Williams spinning different accounts of dangerous helicopter rides in Iraq, the gradual embellishments creeping in over the years. Cue Williams in a Hurricane Katrina documentary telling us how he heard that a man committed suicide in the Superdome, juxtaposed with an interview years later in which he says he “watched” that suicide actually happen. How could we have missed it?

It was inevitable that Bill Cosby would receive a thorough loser edit after his army of accusers began stepping forward. There were too many sleuths nosing around for clues, downloading ancient standup routines, tapping search words into digital scans of out-of-print books: “cocktail hour,” “consent,” “things America’s favorite dad said that are creepy in retrospect.” Is he really joking about dosing women with Spanish fly on a 1969 comedy album? On a talk show in 1991? It was right in front of us all along. Embed the clip, tweet it out. This Cosby edit is on VHS, recorded over the videotape of your childhood illusions, and it cannot be undone. If that can be erased, what else?

How stupid of them to leave all that incriminating evidence out there.

The footage of your loser edit is out there as well, waiting. Taken from the surveillance camera of the gas station where you bought a lottery ticket like a chump. From the A.T.M. that recorded you taking out money for the romantic evening that went bust. From inside the black domes on the ceiling of the train station, the lenses that captured your slow walk up the platform stairs after the doomed excursion. From all the cameras on all the street corners, entryways and strangers’ cellphones, building the digital dossier of your days. Maybe we can’t clearly make out your face in every shot, but everyone knows it’s you. We know you like to slump. Our entire lives as B-roll, shot and stored away to be recut and reviewed at a moment’s notice when the plot changes: the divorce, the layoff, the lawsuit. Any time the producers decide to raise the stakes.

Occasionally, on a “Top Chef” or a “Project Runway,” a contestant suffers a monstrous loser edit, one that lasts a whole season. The unlucky contestant isn’t sent home at the end of the night, but is instead doomed to perform personality deficits episode after episode. The supporting player trapped first by an aspect of himself or herself, and then by editors who won’t let him or her escape the casting. We need a goat.

Perhaps you have a personal acquaintance with this phenomenon, slogging through months and months of your own terrible editing. The audience takes in the spectacle, pressing pause for a quick trip to the kitchen so they won’t miss a second of your humiliation: This is destination television. Your co-workers rewind your loser’s reel, speculating over why you didn’t get that promotion, where it all started to go wrong. If you ask me, it goes back to the Peterson account. Your ex’s buddies pass the potato chips and barely pay attention, texting pals, making jokes on Twitter — they knew before the first commercial break that you were being voted off the island. Your friends and family, who of course love you very much, are tuning in, even though they know all of your story lines by heart. They’ve seen this episode before. There he goes again.

When life gets the drop on us, we have to submit to the framing. We leave too many traces of our failures, too much material for a ruthless editor to work with. As if we didn’t already have one in our heads — cutting and splicing a lifetime of bad decisions and bonehead moves into an existential montage of boobery:

“Why did I say that?”

“What’s wrong with me?”

“Why do I keep falling for that?”

Memory is the most malicious cutter of all, preserving, recasting, panning in slow motion across the awful bits so that we retain every detail.

Can we escape our editing? In their wisdom, the philosopher-consumers of Television Without Pity also identified the loser edit’s opposite number and antiparticle: the winner edit. If there’s a loser edit, there has to be a winner edit. Makes sense. Over the course of a season, the inevitable winner thrives. He or she will suffer some setbacks for drama and suspense, sure, but the groundwork for victory is established challenge by challenge, week by week. It has been written, by fate or the producers, pick your deity. It cannot be reversed.

You know the golden boys and girls who sail through life without care, recipients of an enviable winner edit that lasts season after season. Untouchable. Everyone else has to do it by himself or herself, assembling our edits through a thousand compulsive Facebook tweaks, endless calibrations of Twitter personas, Instagram posts filtered of all disturbance. Should I wear glasses in my profile pic? How do I express solidarity with the freedom fighters? The exaggerations and elisions on your dating profile, and the ridiculous yet oddly calming amount of time you spent choosing the proper font for your résumé. I hear employers associate Calibri with diligence and follow-through. Marshal the flattering anecdotes, string them together into a leitmotif of confidence and sophistication. Cut when this scene establishes the perfect pitch of self-*deprecation, cut before everyone can see your humility for the false modesty it is.

Do you think it’s working? Did you get away with it today?

We give ourselves loser edits and winner edits all the time, to clasp meaning onto experience. Sometimes you render both kinds of edits in the same day, maybe even the same afternoon, deleting certain scenes from your memory, fooling with the contrast, as reality presses on you and directs your perceptions. Pull it off, and maybe you’ll make it to bedtime. Why do you think they call it “Survivor”?

Splice and snip. The contradictory evidence falls to the cutting-room floor, and we assert order, shape a narrative, any narrative, out of the chaos. Whether you tend to give yourself a loser edit to feed that goblin part of your psyche or you fancy the winner’s edit for the camouflage and safety it provides, it’s better than having no arc at all. If we’re going down, let us at least be a protagonist, have a story line, not be just one of those miserable players in the background. A cameo’s stand-in. The loser edit, with all its savage cuts, is confirmation that you exist. The winner edit, even in its artifice, is a gesture toward optimism, the expectation of rewards waiting for that better self. Whenever he or she shows up.

Jeff Zeleny, a prominent political reporter for ABC News and The New York Times, is joining CNN as senior Washington correspondent.

Zeleny, who served as The New York Times's lead political correspondent during the 2012 presidential campaign, is joining CNN's ranks as the network prepares for the run-up to the 2016 election. He will be based in Washington, D.C., and will report both on air and online for the network, which is led by former NBC Universal CEO and noted political news junkie Jeff Zucker.

Zeleny was most recently the senior Washington correspondent at CNN rival ABC News. His political coverage credentials stretch back more than a decade and include extensive reporting on the administrations of both President George W. Bush and President Obama. While at the Chicago Tribune, Zeleny was part of a reporting team that won a Pulitzer Prize in explanatory journalism for its coverage of gridlock in the nation's air traffic control system.

The Brian Williams scandal will spur a shakeup in NBC News’ executive ranks as the network is in talks with former NBC News president Andrew Lack to return in a chief operation role, an insider familiar with the talks told TheWrap.

Lack is in the mix for a leading position in the news group, potentially overseeing NBCUniversal news group, which includes NBC News, MSNBC, and CNBC; Pat Fili-Krushel currently holds that position. With Lack’s return, her role would potentially change. NBC News President Deborah Turnesss’ role could also change.

Under Fili-Krushel, who assumed the Chairman of NBCUniversal news operations position in 2012, NBC, MSNBC and CNBC have all fallen backward in ratings.

“Meet the Press” fell behind in the Sunday show pack, leading to months of gossip and speculation about moderator David Gregory’s fate; he was eventually cut from NBC News in 2014 in a long, drawn-out process similar to Ann Curry’s messy exit from the “Today” show.

MSNBC also fell behind CNN last year in all measurements aside from primetime viewers. And, of course, the figurehead of NBC News—Williams—fell from grace in February as revelations came out that he exaggerated stories from his Iraq war reporting; the worst of it being his conflating being on a plane that was shot down by RPG fire when he was in fact on a trailing plane not hit.

NBC News suspended Williams for six months without pay.

And there’s also been problems in the morning, as Fili-Krushel and NBC News president Deborah Turness’ prized acquisition from ESPN/ABC—Jamie Horowitz—flamed out quickly as General Manager of the “Today” Show.

Horowitz was snagged by NBC to help revive “Today” to the top spot in morning news—he lasted 78 days, fired after Fili-Krushel and Turness caught wind of his mischievous behavior pitting talent and producers against one another, leading them to believe he was trying to figure out who should stay and who should go.

NBC News declined to comment on the record to the TheWrap’s request for comment.

Syfy announced today that Dallas Mavericks owner and Shark Tank star Mark Cuban will play the president of the United States in Sharknado 3.

Political commentator/author Ann Coulter is joining him as vice president.

Other cameos already lined up for the latest installment of the pop-culture pabulum (and we mean that in the nicest possible way): Bo Derek as May, mom of April (Tara Reid); Jerry Springer, who'll play manic tourist Mr. White; 'N SYNC singer Chris Kirkpatrick as a pool lifeguard, and Chris Jericho, who will play Bruce the roller coaster ride operator.

Also joining the cast of Sharknado 3 will be Ryan Newman, as April and Fin's (Ian Ziering) daughter Claudia Sheperd. Jack Griffo will play Claudia's friend, Billy.

Featuring stars Ian Ziering, Tara Reid and Cassie Scerbo (Nova), look for Sharknado 3 to premiere on Syfy at the height of beach season in July. It will cause mass destruction in Washington, before roaring down the Eastern Seaboard and into Florida.

Anthony C. Ferrante will once again direct, based on an original screenplay by Thunder Levin.

Fox’s “The Following” returned to lower ratings than last year last night.

The show’s third-season premiere posted a 1.6 adults 18-49 rating, according to Nielsen, off 20 percent from last year’s timeslot bow, when it averaged a 2.0.

However, it was up slightly from a 1.5 for last spring’s second-season finale.

The show’s second-season premiere aired on a Sunday last year following the NFC championship game and averaged a 4.4. Then the drama moved to Monday the following week.

“Following” had a decent lead-in at 8 p.m. from “Gotham,” which posted a 2.0.

NBC’s “The Voice “was easily the No. 1 show of the night with a 3.8, boosting the network to another easy Monday night win.

Lead-out “The Night Shift” was down a tenth from last week, to a 1.4.

ABC’s “The Bachelor: Women Tell All” special averaged a 2.4 from 8 to 10 p.m., according to Nielsen, up a tenth from last year.

CBS had a schedule heavy with repeats, but an original “Mike & Molly” posted a 2.2, up 10 percent from last week.

NBC was first for the night among 18-49s with a 3.0 average overnight rating and a 9 share. ABC was second at 1.9/6, Fox third at 1.8/5, CBS fourth at 1.5/5, Univision fifth at 1.2/4, Telemundo sixth at 0.6/2, and CW seventh at 0.2/1.

As a reminder, all ratings are based on live-plus-same-day DVR playback, which includes shows replayed before 3 a.m. the night before. Seven-day DVR data won’t be available for several weeks. Forty-nine percent of Nielsen households have DVRs.

At 8 p.m. NBC led with a 3.6 for “Voice,” followed by ABC with a 2.3 for the first hour of “Bachelor.” CBS and Fox tied for third at 2.0, CBS for a repeat of “The Big Bang Theory” (1.8) and a new “Molly” (2.2) and Fox for “Gotham.” Univision was fifth with a 1.3 for “Mi Corazon es Tuyo,” Telemundo sixth with a 0.6 for “Los Miserables,” and CW seventh with a 0.3 for a repeat of “The Originals.”

NBC increased its lead at 9 p.m. with a 4.0 for more “Voice,” followed again by ABC with a 2.4 for more “Bachelor.” Fox was third with a 1.6 for “Following,” CBS fourth with a 1.4 for a repeat of “Scorpion,” Univision fifth with a 1.2 for “Hasta el Fin del Mundo,” Telemundo sixth with a 0.5 for “Tierra de Reyes” and CW seventh with a 0.2 for a rerun of “Jane the Virgin.”

At 10 p.m. NBC was first again with a 1.4 for “Shift,” with CBS second with a 1.2 for a repeat of “NCIS: Los Angeles.” Univision and ABC tied for third at 1.0, Univision for “Que te Perdone Dios” and ABC for a repeat of “Secrets and Lies,” and Telemundo was fifth with a 0.7 for “Dueños del Paraiso.”

NBC also finished first for the night among households with a 7.0 average overnight rating and an 11 share. CBS was second at 5.0/8, ABC third at 4.5/7, Fox fourth at 3.4/5, Univision fifth at 1.2/4, Telemundo sixth at 0.6/2, and CW seventh at 0.4/1.

The final season of Fox’s “Glee” has been a bust in many ways, with the musical comedy falling to new ratings lows.

But the show has achieved one interesting distinction: It’s the first broadcast program that’s getting just as much DVR viewership as it is live.

“Glee” leads the way in time-shifted gains this season, growing by 100 percent from its live-plus-same-day-DVR-playback rating (L+SD) to live-plus-seven-day-DVR-playback rating.

It’s averaging a 0.6 adults 18-49 L+SD rating, according to Nielsen, which doubles to a 1.2 in L+7.

That’s the biggest jump for any program this season, and it says several things about the soon-to-end show.

“Glee” has always been a highly time-shifted show. Last season it averaged a 67 percent bump, and the year before it averaged a 55 percent bump.

But it also reflects the show’s move to Friday night, which tends to be a big night for DVR usage. Live television draws low ratings on Friday, because people are out enjoying the start to the weekend.

They DVR Friday shows and watch them later. Fridays have three of the most-time-shifted shows on broadcast, more than any other night.

NBC’s “Grimm,” another Friday program, ranks second in percentage bump from L+SD to L+7 at 92 percent, going from a 1.2 to a 2.3.

And NBC’s “Constantine,” which airs Fridays as well, ranks eighth, rising 78 percent, from a 0.9 to a 1.6.

The top 10 share other traits as well. Five are sci fi or comic book-based shows, which tend to share a tech-savvy audience.

Soapy shows do well, too, with Fox’s now-canceled “Red Band Society,” ABC’s “Revenge” and NBC’s “Parenthood” all ranking in the top 10.

As for which shows see the biggest increase in actual viewers, as opposed to percentage viewership, it’s popular shows that see the largest bump.

CBS’s “The Big Bang Theory,” broadcast’s top scripted series, gets the biggest rise, a 2.3, with L+7 viewing. And other top-rated programs “Modern Family,” “How to Get Away with Murder,” “The Blacklist” and “Empire” fill out the top five.

What see the smallest gains? Just as you’d expect, it’s sporting events, which most people watch live. Seven of the 10 least-DVRed shows on broadcast are sports programs.